The Ledes

Thursday, September 26, 2024

The New York Times:' live updates of Hurricane Helene developments today are here. “Hurricane Helene was barreling through the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday en route to Florida, where residents were bracing for extreme rain, destructive winds and deadly storm surge ahead of the storm’s expected landfall. The storm could intensify to a Category 4, if not higher, before making landfall late Thursday, and forecasters warned Helene’s anticipated large size could make its impacts felt across an extensive area. Areas as distant as Atlanta and the Appalachians are at risk for heavy rains.... Many forecast models show the storm making landfall late Thursday near Florida’s Big Bend Coast, a sparsely populated stretch....” ~~~

     ~~~ The Washington Post has forecasts for some cites in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina & Tennessee that are in or near the probable path of Helene. ~~~

     ~~~ This morning, an MSNBC weatherperson said Tallahassee (which is inland) would experience wind gusts of up to 120 m.p.h. and that the National Weather Service said expected 20-foot storm surges near the coast would be “unsurvivable.”

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The Ledes

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

The New York Times is live-updating developments in the progress of Hurricane Helene. “Helene continued to power north in the Caribbean Sea, strengthening into a hurricane Wednesday morning, on a path that forecasters expect will bring heavy amounts of rain to Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and western Cuba before it begins to move toward Florida’s Gulf Coast.” ~~~

~~~ CNN: “Helene rapidly intensified into a hurricane Wednesday as it plows toward a Florida landfall as the strongest hurricane to hit the United States in over a year. The storm will also grow into a massive, sprawling monster as it continues to intensify, one that won’t just slam Florida, but also much of the Southeast.... Thousands of Florida residents have already been forced to evacuate and nearly the entire state is under alerts as the storm threatens to unleash flooding rainfall, damaging winds and life-threatening storm surge.... The hurricane unleashed its fury on parts of Mexico’s Yucátan Peninsula and Cuba Wednesday.“

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The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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Tuesday
Jul122011

The Commentariat -- July 13

I've posted an Open Thread on Off Times Square for today. Since I doubt the Times will publish it, I've added my comment on Maureen Dowd's column.

** "Do You Believe in Magic?" Paul Krugman says he's doesn't want to go tit-for-tat with the magical-thinking David Brooks, but he does. CW: to each and every one of my conservative commenters: read this post. It might not make you all better, but it will help you recover from your "Brooks is right" delusions.

Your Chart of the Day, from Ezra Klein, with explanation here: (as one commenter to Klein's blogpost wrote, "Obama has got to be the worst negotiator in history"):

"The Negotiators." Act 4, Scene 2, the White House, Tuesday, July 12: Eric Cantor demands that President Obama offer the details of his vision for a “grand bargain.”

Cantor (angrily, to Obama): Where’s your paper?

Obama (snapping): Frankly, your speaker has it.  Am I dealing with him, or am I dealing with you?

Sneerer-in-Chief. Dana Milbank: "What [House Majority Leader Eric] Cantor wants now is power — and he is prepared to risk the full faith and credit of the United States to get it. In a primacy struggle with House Speaker John Boehner, he has done a deft job of aligning himself with Tea Party House members in opposition to any meaningful deal to resolve the debt. If the U.S. government defaults, it will have much to do with Cantor."

Ezra Klein on Mitch McConnell's debt ceiling plan: "I kinda like it.... McConnell is proposing to permanently disarm the bomb that is the debt ceiling. He’d formalize the informal arrangement the parties have had in recent years, which is that the debt ceiling is used to embarrass the party in power, but it’s not allowed to threaten the American economy. If his plan passed, it’d become easier for the minority party to embarrass the majority party, but harder for them to threaten the economy. It’s win-win.... The cynical interpretation of McConnell’s motivations is that McConnell sees that the White House is winning the politics of this issue...." CW: see today's Ledes for the backstory. Also this WashPo story by Lori Montgomery, et al. ...

... Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "... apparently McConnell had started to realize that shutting down the government over tax breaks for hedge fund billionaires and shorter depreciation schedules for corporate jet owners was really, really, not going to go down well, even among Republicans. So he pushed the eject button and tried to bail out. It probably won't work, though. The political cynicism of his proposal is almost certainly too much for some Democrats, and giving up on spending cuts will be too much for most Republicans. Still, it provides a hint about who has the upper hand in the debt ceiling negotiations right now. And it ain't McConnell." ...

... Josh Marshall of TPM: "McConnell's 'evil genius' move seems like all it does is make the Democrats go to the public with what they believe is best for the country and be accountable for it. I have a hard time seeing that as being a meaningful threat. Since that's what people who are given the power to govern are supposed to do." ...

... Markos Moulitsas: "So McConnell's plan gives Republicans the ability to bash Democrats for spending, which they would do anyway, and this is a big victory for them? Genius? Hardly. This is a capitulation. Just watching teabagger heads explode will be worth the price of admission."

This debt limit increase is his [Obama's] problem. -- John Boehner, yesterday

Steve Benen: "... by most measures, [John Boehner] has a legal obligation to protect the full faith and credit of the United States. But as of today, with the crisis quickly approaching, the Speaker of the House, one of the most powerful officeholders in our system of government, has decided this isn’t his 'problem.'” In the past, Boehner has repeatedly said, on the record, the Congress must raise the debt ceiling. ...

... Chris Moody of Yahoo! News: "Conservative groups that had been anxiously hoping to use this summer's debt ceiling vote as a rare opportunity to reduce government spending were furious Wednesday when Senate Republicans outlined a plan to raise the limit without ensured spending cuts."

... Larry Summers (yes, that Larry Summers) advocates for immediate economic stimulus in a Financial Times opinion piece: "Decisions about spending and taxing over the next year or two will have a significant impact on job creation over the next year, the economy over the next decade and on the path of US national debt over an even longer horizon." ...

... Loaves & Fishes, Republican-Style:

... David Leonhardt of the New York Times: sooner or later the free lunch has to end. The nostalgic view of the federal budget (CW: promulgated by Republicans) "depends on a misunderstanding of the budget. It imagines a budget in which the United States indefinitely has the world’s highest medical costs, its largest military, an aging population and, nonetheless, taxes that are among the world’s lowest." ...

... John Sides of the Monkey Cage: there are a number of possible outcomes to the debt ceiling talks, but "Obama’s reelection effort gets a boost from a budget deal only if the deal doesn’t itself hurt the economy and if the economy improves enough that the GOP needs another issue to campaign on." ...

... NEW. Krugman explains to those living & working in the Washington bubble that the average voter, much less the average "independent" (low-information) voter is just not that into you.

Michael Likosky in a New York Times op-ed: "While we have channeled capital into wars and debt, our competitors in Asia and Latin America have worked with infrastructure banks to lay a sound foundation for growth. As a result, we must compete not only with their lower labor costs but also with their advanced energy, transportation and information platforms, which are a magnet even for American businesses." Likosky advicates for a bill by Sens. John Kerry & Kay Bailey Hutchison to pump cash & loans into infrastructure projects.

Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now!" in a TruthDig commentary: "President Barack Obama just announced a reversal of a long-standing policy that denied presidential condolence letters to the family members of soldiers who commit suicide. Relatives of soldiers killed in action receive letters from the president. Official silence, however, has long stigmatized those who die of self-inflicted wounds. The change marks a long-overdue shift in the recognition of the epidemic of soldier and veteran suicides in this country and the toll of the hidden wounds of war."

Landon Thomas, Jr., of the New York Times on three generations of Prime Ministers Papandreou. CW: my husband, who knew Andreas, always used Andreas as an excuse for not taking me to Greece: he said Andreas would have him arrested! I think my husband just did not want to go to Greece. Besides, Italy has examples of Greek antiquity as fine as those in Greece. Or so my husband says.

At this point it’s starting to look as if News Corp is better viewed as a criminal enterprise than as a media organization. -- Paul Krugman ...

... Sarah Lyall & Graham Bowley of the New York Times: "... as the phone hacking scandal spreads, [British PM David] Cameron has been placed in the unaccustomed position of appearing vulnerable and behind the curve. He has been maneuvered into embarrassing U-turns nearly every step of the way, and on Tuesday performed the latest one: suddenly joining the opposition Labour Party, his bitterest foes, in calling for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation to withdraw its $12 billion bid to buy British Sky Broadcasting, known also as BSkyB."

Right Wing World *

Giant Demonic Idol.You know there's a statue in New York harbor called the Statue of Liberty. You know where we got it from? French Freemasons. Listen folks that is an idol, a demonic idol, right there in New York harbor.... It's a statue of a false goddess, the Queen of Heaven. We don't get liberty from a false goddess, folks; we get our liberty from Jesus Christ and that Statue of Liberty in no way glorifies Jesus Christ.... So I'm just telling you we practice idolatry in America in ways that we don't even recognize.
-- John Benefiel, a pastor prominently featured in literature for Gov. Rick Perry's (R-Texas) upcoming "giant prayer-fest to help tackle the nation's problems" (TPM has the video)

 

* Where there shalt not be "demonic idols" like the Statue of Liberty.

News Ledes

Guardian: "Mumbai, [India,] was struck by three powerful bomb blasts during the evening rush hour on Wednesday that killed at least 21 people and injured dozens more.... India's home minister, P Chidambaram, warned that the death toll could rise further. It is the fourth major attack by suspected terrorists on India's financial capital since 2003."

Guardian: the high court in London heard arguments today in the case of Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, who is appealing his extradition to Sweden. He remains in Norfolk, under house arrest, until the court renders its decision, which will be in about a month.

President Obama & Vice President Biden met with Congressional leaders on the debt ceiling talks this afternoon. ...

     ... Update: Washington Post, post-meeting: "Two top Republican leaders clashed Wednesday over a plan that could allow the government to avoid a potentially catastrophic default but would not ensure the deep cuts in federal spending that party members seek. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) ... offered a proposal this week that would allow President Obama to raise the federal debt limit without guaranteed spending cuts.... But House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) rejected McConnell’s plan for resolving the debt stalemate, instead vowing to press ahead with the campaign to roll back government spending." ...

... New York Times: "The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, warned Wednesday that allowing a federal default could have disastrous political consequences for his party and 'destroy' the Republican brand."

Ronald Reagan repeatedly took steps that included revenue in order for him to accomplish some of these larger goals. And the question is, if Ronald Reagan could compromise, why wouldn't folks who idolize Ronald Reagan be willing to engage in those same kinds of compromises? -- Barack Obama

     ... Related Los Angeles Times story here. You can go to the CBS News site & click on the videos at the bottom of the page. And good luck; CBS News videos are just a mess.

New York Times: "... Ben S. Bernanke gave a subdued account of the economy’s health Wednesday, saying that he expected the economy to grow at a moderate pace during the rest of the year, with unemployment declining 'only gradually.' The unexpected weakness is forcing the Fed to reconsider its determination early this year to refrain from new efforts to stimulate growth. While no additional actions appear imminent, Mr. Bernanke said in Congressional testimony Wednesday that the Fed would be prepared to act if necessary.”

New York Times: "The Catholic Church in Ireland was still covering up sexual abuse of children by priests as recently as 2009, long after it issued guidelines meant to protect children, and the Vatican tacitly encouraged the cover-up by ignoring the guidelines, according to a scathing report issued on Wednesday by the Irish government." The full report via the NYT is here; however, I kept getting errors on the page; the Irish Times has a pdf of the full report here. The Irish Times' main story is here, & their main page for the report, with multiple links, is here. The IT has a very brief rundown of the Cloyne Report's main findings here.

New York Times: "One of the biggest revenue-raisers proposed by President Obama in negotiations with Congress is what he describes as an arcane change in the tax treatment of business inventories — things like steel, groceries and oil.... The effect of the change would be substantial. Lobbyists from companies of all sizes are swarming around Congress to kill the proposal, which would prohibit the use of an accounting technique known as last in, first out, or LIFO." ...

... New York Times: The ideas of budget negotiators "to cut Medicare and Medicaid they have managed to provoke opposition from almost every major group that represents beneficiaries and health care providers." Proposals by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) "touched off howls of protest from lobbyists and Democratic lawmakers who saw details for the first time on Tuesday."

New York Times: "President Obama raised more than $86 million for his re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee in the last three months, besting previous campaign fund-raising records for the quarter and far outpacing the Republicans who are hoping to replace him in the White House. Mr. Obama’s campaign, Obama for America, raised $47 million, while the president’s frequent fundraisers boosted the D.N.C.’s coffers by $38 million. Democrats had set a goal of raising a combined $60 million for both groups by the end of June." With video of Jim Messina giving a pitch.

Los Angeles Times: "In a hard-fought special congressional election marked by sharp divisions in ideology and even sharper personal attacks, Democrat Janice Hahn defeated underdog Republican Craig Huey on Tuesday. Unofficial election night returns showed Hahn won 54.6% to 45.4%."

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Candidates backed by the Democratic Party won all six Senate primary elections, all but one of them by substantial amounts. They'll all go on to face the Republican incumbents on Aug. 9, in an attempt by Democrats to regain control of the state Senate and put the brakes on Gov. Scott Walker's agenda."

AP: "A CIA officer who oversaw the agency's interrogation program at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and pushed for approval to use increasingly harsh tactics has come under scrutiny in a federal war crimes investigation involving the death of a prisoner, witnesses told The Associated Press. Steve Stormoen, who is now retired from the CIA, supervised an unofficial program in which the CIA imprisoned and interrogated men without entering their names in the Army's books."

AP: Former First Lady Betty "Ford, who died Friday at age 93, was memorialized Tuesday by some 800 friends and family members, including no fewer than four current and former first ladies and one ex-president."

Guardian: "A key US senator has called for an investigation into whether any of News Corporation's organisations in the country have hacked US citizens. Senate commerce committee chairman Jay Rockefeller has asked the authorities to investigate if any journalists working for Rupert Murdoch had targeted US citizens, and warned of 'serious consequences' for the media group if that were the case." NBC News story here. ...

... New York Times: "The tremors from the phone-hacking scandal shaking Rupert Murdoch’s media empire spread yet further through the British political establishment on Wednesday as Prime Minister David Cameron urged Mr. Murdoch to abandon his ambitions to complete a takeover of the country’s biggest satellite broadcaster." ...

     ... Guardian Update: "Rupert Murdoch's media group News Corporation bowed to pressure from the public and parliament on Wednesday and withdrew its bid to take full control of pay-TV company BSkyB."

AP: "Italy's finance minister says the government's package of austerity measures will be strengthened and passed in both houses by Friday. Giulio Tremonti sought to reassure markets during a speech to a banker's association meeting in Rome that Italy would speed reforms and austerity measures that seek to balance the budget by 2014."

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